This invention relates to coke ovens in general and, in particular, to new and useful vertical chamber ovens arranged in batteries for the continuous coking of briquettes from hard coal, soft coal or peat, with heating by heating walls arranged laterally of the oven chambers, which are subdivided by binder walls into individual heating flues and to which fuel gases are fed through foot nozzles and combustion air through vertical ducts in the binder walls and through lateral slots originating from the ducts and leading to the heating flues at several levels, as well as an offtake in the upper range for the coke oven gases.